Christmas Open House

It's time again for the annual open house here at my home.  You're all invited to come.  It's Thursday, December 15 from 10 - 2.  My address is 20578 SW Colville Ct, Tualatin.  My studio is open, lots of quilts are on display and lots of goodies to eat.  Come for lunch or just drop in for a quick visit.  Anyone bringing a quilt to the open house will receive a 20% discount off the quilting (but it won't be quilted until January or February).  I'm looking forward to seeing many of you.

Been too busy to blog

Life has been so busy lately.  The best thing that has kept me busy is my new grandson, Shaphan.  He is now almost 6 weeks old and absolutely adorable.  Such a good baby.  Because we live so close I've been around him a lot.  This grandma stuff is just the best role -- I love it!
I have also been busy quilting.  I'm in the thick of fall/Christmas quilting.  I've expanded my quilting hours so now I'm in the studio about 20 - 30 hours a week.  It's always busy in September, October and November.  I try to finish up by the first week of December so I can take about a month break.  It's good to have some time to work on my own stuff too during that break. 

My other preoccupation is my winter garden.  Rick, my wonderful husband, made me a raised bed and put it right in the center of the front yard.  Then he built a plastic greenhouse cover on a hinge so I can access it easily.  I have lettuce, spinach, chard, beets, radishes and carrots growing in it.  It's fun and I hope it works all winter long.  I'm posting a picture of it.

Wholecloth Quilting

It's done -- the wholecloth quilt.  It's a wedding gift for my daughter and her husband.  I hope they like it.  Here's my evaluation:  I like the basics of the design a lot.  The idea of random circles in the first border was fun and turned out well.  The center circle is interesting with all the filler ideas in each circle around the leaf vine.  It was hard to come up with 22 different ideas to fill those circles.  I love the fabric color.  It is a silver and has a shine to it that is really nice.  What I would do differently:  I think the quilt needed some other design introduced somewhere.  My daughter didn't want a quilt that was heavily quilted for their bed so that really limited me on what I wanted to do as filler in many areas.  I would have chosen to fill in the center circle around the vine and leaves with something very small.  The area in the center square would have been nicer with a small design too (in my estimation).  But all in all, I'm happy with the overall look.  It has made me think of some ideas for another wholecloth that might be show worthy.  I do love wholecloths even though they take a lot of time.  One of the pictures show my kitties who were constant companions in the quilting.  They chased every thread and binding piece; they continually walked on the quilt even while the machine was running, Tux took a liking to the pins on the magnetic pin cushion and Wolverine decided that he could carry my wrist pin cushion around the house (I found it under the dining room table one day).  Normally I don't let the cats near customer quilts and keep the door to my studio closed but since I know how much my daughter likes cats I thought they should help with this quilt!  :)

Wholecloth Quilting

This quilt has been kind of in my head for about a year.  I've had the grey sheets for many months.  I decided last week that the theme of this quilt would be circles.  It's for my daughter and her husband who were married last year (who says wedding gifts should be on time)! 
Just like my last wholecloth quilt, I don't really know where this one is going.  I know the theme is circles and I want it to look contemporary.  There is an X made in the center of the fabric so I know where the center is (though they rarely are perfectly centered).  You see, I'm just not the planning, tracing out kind of quilter.  I would rather challenge myself to be creative as the quilt progresses.  It is a huge challenge and it may be disappointing in the end but I also feel great excitement as I anticipate what might come next. 
So stay tuned and I'll post pictures as it unfolds.  I have two weeks to do this quilt before I must do the next customer quilt.  I'm excited!

Productive Day of Quilting

If I can get a lot of interrupted time (no phone calls, no kids to run here and there etc.) I can usually accomplish a lot of quilting.  Today was one of those days.  The phone didn't ring, my kids were all gone and I quilted from about 6 am until 3:00.  I finished the quilt you see right below this morning then did two small quilts.   These small ones are so cute.  I especially like the embroidered cat one.  It does reflect my life -- cook, shop, iron, quilt, sweep, etc.  The only thing that wasn't on the quilt was computing:)

Finally back to quilting

August is always one of the busiest months for me.  Everything is coming ripe in my garden and needs tending.  I work the Clackamas County Fair as a 4-H superintendent and that take about 10 days out of the month (many of them 12 hour days).  Our family also went camping and I spent 2 days with my oldest daughter.  So here it is the end of the month and I'm finally back to quilting. This quilt was started around the 1st of August.  I love the final look -- though I must say I was very tired of it after hours and hours of quilting.  One of the best parts of this quilt is the way the colors of each star block are placed in the quilt.  The fabrics are all batiks.  Beautiful!

Customer Quilt

I have done a bunch of easy all-over patterns on quilts lately.  They go fast.  Now I'm working on a quilt that will probably take quite a few days to complete.  Lots of quilting.  It is coming along beautifully though.  It was one of those quilts that I knew almost immediately what I was going to quilt on it.  Sometimes that can be such a dilemna but not with this one.  I'll post pictures when it's done.

Mistakes happen

I have been longarm quilting for over 10 years now.  I would say in those 10 years there have been only few customer quilts where something bad happened.  A crease in the back, wrong color of thread in the bobbin (forgot to change it), thread that just wouldn't cooperate and left loops or just kept breaking, etc.  But last week was the first time that this ever happened.  I was moving the machine across the quilt when all of a sudden the needle went up/down.  It did it with such force that not only did a rip a hole in the quilt, but the whole machine came off the track!  I was shocked!  This was such a large quilt that there wasn't much space on each side so getting the machine back on track was really difficult.  Then I went to see what damage was caused in the quilt.  There was about a 1/4" hole ripped in the sashing border.  And of all places it was in the solid colored fabric.  If it had been in the printed fabric, after a repair job you probably never could have found it.  To repair it (while still on the machine), I fused some fusible interfacing to the back side of the tear.  Then I used seam sealant on the raw edges.  That should keep it from every fraying.  When I came to that part in the quilting, I put a leaf design around the hole.  It will have extra stability and hopefully never get any larger even when washed.  Finally, the customer got a discount on the quilting.  Here's a couple photos of the quilt and an upclose photo of the hole.  Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen to any of you longarm quilters.  It would be fun, though, to share horror stories -- let me know if you have one :)

Recent Customer Quilts

Here's a couple recent customer quilts.  Simple designs but really nice on these quilts.  It's so wonderful to have a machine that is working top-notch again.  It does makes quilting a lot more fun. 

Vacation, Quilting, and other things that are occupying my time

I finished my first quilt after a 3 week break.  It's good to have extended breaks in life.  I spent part of a week at my parent's home.  It was a really great time.  They are in their 80's and thinking of selling their home and moving to a senior living center.  We visited the place -- really nice.  They are excited about the prospect of living there.
I also spent part of a week with my sister visiting.  We had so much fun.  She is also a longarm quilter so there was lots of time discussing quilting, sewing together and visiting quilt shops.  We watched BBC movies, visited some cute shops, ate out, saw a friends beautiful yard and garden, went to a farmer's market and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
The last week off was consumed with two new little family members.  We got 2 new kittens.  In the last two years we lost two cats and our dog so now our house is once again filled with 'pet activity'.  Even as I type this, one is regularly stalking and pouncing on my keyboard (makes for lots of spelling errors).  Here's a couple pictures of these cuties.  We names the orange and white one Wolverine and the black and white one Tux.
By the way, my longarm is back in service.  It runs beautifully.  Feels like it's brand new.  It has made quilting a joy again.  I am booked into October and that means I only have 2 months of spots to fill before the Christmas season (I take December off).  They usually go very quickly so if you want something quilted before Christmas you better let me know soon.